What makes a swimming pool a swimming pool?
Is it chlorine? The deep end? An expertly bronzed and acutely bored high-schooler sitting aloft a lifeguard chair hollering at eight-year-old passersby to “slow down, maaan”?
Well, that’s one kind of swimming pool. This is the better kind:
Antiroom II, a floating pavilion built by students at the European Architecture Students Assembly earlier this year. Accessible by boat or strenuous doggy paddle, Antiroom is a floating, canopied water gazebo off the coast of the town of Valetta, in Malta.
The core of the island-like pavilion is a “small secure water pool” that serves as a refuge but remains “separated from the vastness of the unlimited sea” as the structure drifts. And it accepts all comers.
“Antiroom II is a physical symbol to welcome and accept anyone,” according to the designers. “All cultures, without exceptions.”
Don’t forget to bring a towel.
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